Those same people will tell you an electric car is a "zero emissions vehicle" because it doesn't have a tailpipe.
Bullshit!
If I bought an electric car, the tailpipe would be sticking out of my local coal-burning power plant.
For other people the tailpipe may resemble a spent nuclear fuel rod, a dammed up river, heavy metals used in solar panels, etc. (wind power is pretty clean though)
I think the best way to picture a fuel cell is as a rechargeable battery. It will store energy more efficiently than most rechargeable batteries, but the energy has to come from somewhere.
Exactly how clean a fuel cell is depends on how cleanly you "charge" it up. If you charge it up overnight with a modified 2-stroke chainsaw, you probably aren't reducing your emissions. Heh.
"John Eyles" wrote in message news:bm51b7$9at$ snipped-for-privacy@capefear.cs.unc.edu...
So how many years do you think is justifiable in the (hopeless) attempt to build an international consensus to go to war with Iraq? I count about a decade already spent getting nothing done, countless violations by Iraq all along the way, some of them obvious and in the open, some of them well hidden. You've been breathing too many ethanol fumes already if you think we would have EVER EVER EVER gotten support of the international community to go to war. And this is the ONLY way Sadaam would have ever been removed from power. Deal with it; you don't have to like it; I personally hate that it ever came to this, but I also believe completely that the alternative (including the one you suggested) were nothing but dead-end streets. The time has come to recognize the seriousness of the enemies we have in the world, and rotten choices are all that will be offered to us. We chose one that was less rotten than the others. It sucks. But please don't kid yourself any longer with false notions that we could somehow reason with terrorists, or that countries that have forgotten that freedom is costly would ever go along with paying the price of it themselves. That's one of the reasons the USA exists, in my opinion. We know just how expensive it is to attain freedom, and we know that some peoples in the world simply have no access to accomplish it themselves. The Iraqi peoples could not overthrow Sadaam themselves. Period!
Allies? You really are kidding, right? They are just as self-serving as they accuse Bush of being. And many of them have been about as useless as (insert proper imagery here) throughout most of the dealings with Iraq and terrorists in general.
I'm sorry, but it makes me laugh to hear that put that way. As if there are some rules we should abide by when dealing with the Sadaams of the world. There is _nothing_ we should even think is off limits when it comes to scum that needs to be eradicated. And we should have done it a _long_ time ago.
Sympathy wouldn't remove Sadaam.
As Bill pointed out, nothing we are seeing should be even slightly surprising. Horrible? Absolutely! But surprising? Not even. We should already have FULL support of the international community after revelations about what Sadaam was doing there, in SPITE of no WMDs found. Who really thought we would find tons of WMDs laying around? Sadaam had way too much time to either remove or destroy that which did exist, and don't think some of it couldn't turn up on our doorsteps tomorrow morning. The reconstruction job is probably the biggest task ever undertaken of its kind in history, IMO, and I don't know if it has much of a chance of true success by democratic standards even if we get LOTS more support in the effort. I hope it can work but I'm not optimistic. My standard of success would be that Iraq at least ends up with a leadership that has some form of mixed representation, even if it is only minimal at that. That would be a HUGE change in cultural expectations for most Iraqis. -- Off to ride the mountains, D H Reply to newsgroup. Spam is out of control.
Keep it up! They NEED you whether they realize it or not.
Yeah man! Biodiesel is good stuff. I'm still wondering why the current crop of hybrid electrics are using gasoline instead of an alternative fuel like diesel, LP, or NG.
People have similar unfounded complaints about replacing the batteries in hybrid electric cars. If hybrid can cut fuel consumption by 20%, I guarantee you the emissions you would otherwise end up putting into the atmosphere would weigh at least as much as that battery and in the case of the battery everything is contained in a nice little box for recycling or disposal instead of scattered in the air where your best hope of collecting it is with your lungs.
Oxygen comes from the air but you must have hydrogen under pressure otherwise it only weighs ~2 grams/sq.ft. Hydrogen absorption systems under study only absorb a few percent. I suspect the GM concept car that goes ~200 miles on a charge of hydrogen has tanks at 10,000 psi. When they perfect the methanol fuel cell (carbon deactivates hydrogen fuel cells) they will have a practical machine. You can make methanol from natural gas or coal. I saw the commercial coal syn-gas process at Tennessee Eastman and it was remarkably clean. This thread prompted me to check George Olah's comments and I see DARPA has advanced research on a practical methanol fuel cell. Frank
My own experience has been quite different. All environmentalists I know have a very firm standing in science and/or engineering. They seem to be fighting not their own ignorance but obstacles such as the oils cartels and car manufacturing lobby.
Well, the obvious answer is, use regenerative energy sources such as solar or wind. Electrolysis of water seems like a pretty good way of storing those fleeting/seasonal energy sources for later use. Far better and cheaper than batteries.
I don't know about you, but the thought of sitting on a tank of hydrogen at 10,000 psi doesn't exactly thrill me. It's why I prefer propane over natural gas: It liquifies at a much more reasonable pressure.
You're still using fossil fuels, but if the use is cleaner it's a good step.
Well, I _was_ gonna keep my nose outta this one, but Mike has touched on a sore spot; environmentalists/sheep who regurgitate non-facts fed to them thru mainstream (or otherwise) "green" periodicals, without an ounce of original thought added to the mix. For instance: I lived in Boulder CO many years ago. There was a fad among the green crowd at the time to sport bumper-stickers that proclaimed "Split Wood, Not Atoms". I'm not sure if I want to laugh, or cry at the mentality that spawned this oxymoron, but just try and argue the point with someone who's convinced that they're saving the planet by heating their home thru the Colorado winter with burning pine trees :-P And, lest you think that I am picking on the environmentalists (well, I guess I am, kinda . . .), I have observed that there are plenty of people on both sides of the fence who are more than willing to vociferously parade their opinions as fact, and who wouldn't recognize an original thought if it bit them in the ass. Sigh. Rant mode off.
ByeBye! S.
Steve Jernigan KG0MB Laboratory Manager Microelectronics Research University of Colorado (719) 262-3101
I wanted to stay the hell away from this thread, but I can't.
Since you have a very firm standing in science and/or engineering perhaps you can tell us the best practical overall efficiency of electrolysis. While you're at it, how about a fuel to user breakdown of your system's efficiency?
Yes, you do. You'll need everyone's good will. Alienating other cultures with your collective superiority complex will see you ending up sacrificing your family on the altar of your mis-conceived patriotism. Do you really think they blew up the WTC just because most US citizens don't believe in Allah? Why didn't they fell the Eiffel Tower instead? It would have been much easier, much more symbolic and much closer to home.
Well, why war in the first place? War to facilitate a regime change is illegal in anyones (other that the US') book and would have been unanimously condemned by the UN and the international public. So, "WMD!" was the war cry. Most countries, and the UN weapons inspectors didn't believe there were any. The US went to war anyway. And, it turns out, there aren't any. Hence we have a simple case of illegal regime change. I suppose, with post-war costs mounting, the US tax payers get what they deserve by supporting (or not stopping) their administration going to war.
Doesn't that make you stop and think, maybe it isn't right going to war?
Just imagine, the Kingdom of Borduria decides the American people needs to be liberated from G.W.Bush. After all, he's hording WMD's and other evil stuff, and controls the world economy to the benefit of a few US mega corporations. The Kingdom of Borduria doesn't get anywhere with its idea in the UN, so they simply decide to assassinate him. Not that they'd find the whole US population in opposition to that, after all, less than half of them actually wanted him as president. What would you think? How would you feel?
Don't you think time has come to leave the pirate days behind and behave like a civilised nation?
This has got to be the most arrogant and self-righteous statement I've heard in years...
Well, good morning, there are.
If you leave the path of lawfulness you're just another rogue state. Beware, somebody might decide to deal with you!
"A long time ago", the US practically installed Saddam Hussein as dictator and sold him the WMD's they accused him later of having. Although he used them all up in the '80s and '90s.
But why remove Saddam as a priority? He didn't flatten the WTC. There would surely be more important things to be removed, like budget deficit or inflation. Or the stranglehold the military-industrial complex has on the US administration.
As a Subaru owner, I have been generally pleased with this thread and the technical understanding of fellow owners. It is widely toted that about 20% of all Americans are functionally illiterate, i.e. they cannot even read newspapers and road signs. I feel that the technical illiteracy rate is far higher. A hydrogen economy based on the thought that "we have all the hydrogen we need in water" is ludicrous yet believed by a lot of Americans. Frank
Solar or wind powered electrolysis doesn't require high efficiency, as it uses plentiful and renewable energy sources.
It wouldn't matter too much if we wasted 90% of the solar energy that hits a square metre, if we conserved the remaining 10% as hydrogen. Those 10% are a free bonus. Photovoltaic plants are far more efficient than that, or course.
The biggest problem today is (still) deployment costs (and hence, from the business point of view, amortisation), since solar or wind plants are still not the mass market product the should be, and hence more expensive than they should be.
Since energy policy still has to bow to the business balance sheet much more than to the environmental balance sheet this is going to be an ongoing struggle for years to come.
It may be cheaper to burn oil right now, but if we don't ramp up renewable energy technologies before the oil runs out we're in deep shit.
No we won't be. Intrinsically safe nuclear power plants with fuel reprocessing is the only thing that will work medium-term.
Solar power is fine, but if you run the numbers, you'll see that we will have to pave over the state of Arizona to collect enough power to make a sizable dent in our consumption.
But that would suit the environmentalists just fine because then they'd have a new cause to try to bankrupt everyone over. Remember what I said about their job security by solving one problem and creating ten new ones with their "solution".
"All the solar panels are changing the emissivity of the earth to such an extent that it's going to cause global warming (or a new ice age depending on the day of the week). And just LOOK at what all these panels are doing to the environment!!".
Bill Putney (to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with "x")
MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.